


how the tide changes

by navaan



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Choices, Complicated Relationships, F/F, F/M, Introspection, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 02:13:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3232445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sara realizes that they've all done this before, but that this time their roles are reversed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how the tide changes

**Author's Note:**

> I'm ridiculously fascinated by all the relationships in Arrow and how the series manages to build in so many parallels and events that are mirrors to older events – with and without the flashbacks. So I suppose that's where this came from.
> 
> You can also read and comment on livejournal [here](http://navaan.livejournal.com/177628.html).

She's free from the League and she's home. Her father knows, knows who and what she is, and loves her still. Her family is here and safe. 

She's truly home. And for the first time since forever she's actually free. She's not getting manipulated, not wearing the name of a bird like a badge anymore. She's free to be like that bird and spread her wings, free to fly. 

And Oliver is here, right here, and she knows that things have changed, couldn't be more different from what things had been between stupid college boy Oliver Queen and irresponsible, carefree Sara Lance. But he's here and she's here and once again and against all odds they are both alive. Shipwreck and murderous island and secret operatives and assassins training – and yet here they are. Perhaps no longer Sara and Ollie, but Canary and Arrow. Together again under different circumstances. Survivors ready to tackle living.

And it's not just her: they are both free. Oliver is not with Laurel anymore – and Sara is on her own now, released from her life with the league and the life with Nyssa.

She's _free_.

It's a rush.

This is what it's like to be happy. She'd forgotten, the frightened little girl who died twice over. But, yes, this is happiness. 

And kissing Ollie is bliss. It's _feeling_ , it's _life_.

Suddenly they are where they should have been six years ago, not deceiving anybody, feeling alive and being in love without anything standing between them. 

They've done this before, but this time the time is right.

It's never been as right before.

* * *

Their lovemaking is full of passion and Sara enjoys the heady power of it all. Oliver isn't quick to leave her side after. He clings to her through sleep and dream and nightmares.

This is how times have changed. 

Oliver doesn't realize it yet, but he's looking for stability. He's not the scared boy who is running, because he's afraid of settling down. Sara smiles as she watches him sleep, stroking his hair, touching the scars and tattoos that cover his body. There are all kinds of scars covering her own and Oliver loves to touch them. They are marks of the life they have now, marks of the life they no longer have.

They've learned to wear them with pride.

They've found each other again, but this time it's as equals, seeing eye to eye.

There would have been easier ways to grow up, to _grow_ , but they've come a long way and that's what counts.

“Sara,” Oliver says, slowly opening his eyes, still sleepy. “Good morning.”

She laughs. “Good morning, Ollie. We should get up before your friends come and find us.” 

“They won't mind,” he says and smiles, relaxed and not in a hurry to get out of the makeshift bed they are using here in Oliver's little vigilante headquarter. They both feel more at home in hideouts than with their families.

As she slowly slips out of bed she's aware that his eyes are following her. “Let's work out,” she proposes. 

“We can do that right here,” he shoots back with an intense stare. 

She laughs. It's so much like old times. Underneath the outer shells of these new and hardened people, maybe they still are the same stupid kids from years back after all.

* * *

They are the same, but aren't. Tension rises when Sara is reminded that her training also helped her see the world for what it is. Oliver has learned that lesson, too, but he's been with Diggle and Felicity for so long that the light that's still left in him is beginning to burn brighter. He's not a murderer. Not any more. And she can see it under the surface: He wants to be a hero. And one day he'll be one.

The darkness has made him a better man.

But Sara still knows the world for what it is – and sometimes the only thing that can beat evil is evil. Not a knight in shining armor, not a vigilante with the intention of saving everyone. She's been turned into a weapon, a blade to strike at whoever she's pointed at. She knows how evil works, intimately and oh so well. She knows what she needs to do, knows only her own moral code.

It's hard to face the fact that Sara Lance did not wear the name of a yellow bird, but that she is that bird now. 

She remembers the way Nyssa kissed her after she killed a man who'd betrayed them, who'd killed people, murdered children. There is no remorse connected to the memory. 

There is a part of her that even Ollie can't understand. But Nyssa had loved her. All of her. Even the killer.

* * *

Oliver is with her and not Laurel and it should be all she ever longed for. Nothing is standing between them – except there is.

The little party girl she was once upon a time fell in love with her sister's boyfriend long before she ended up with him on the Queen's gambit. She knows she had only been his way out of a situation he hadn't been ready for then. 

This time it's her. She's free for the first time and she's learning who she is. He wants a relationship and perhaps he thinks this is what will save him, hold him on the right path towards a hero's destiny. But Sara can't be that.

She's not ready for that.

She can't be a hero. She can't be safe.

She's still who she is, tempered steel and deadly blade.

They are doing it all again, but this time their roles in this game are twisted. They are doing it in reverse. He's serious about her, but can't understand why she's shying away from it all. It's like Laurel and Oliver all over again, but it's Sara who is no longer just the convenient escape out of responsibility – she's the one who is afraid to settle down and change. 

So they argue and fight. And Sara is who she is. A survivor. Angry. Ready to answer violence with violence.

Oliver doesn't understand that she can't just decide to not be that any more. It has taken him much more time than this, too. And perhaps part of him already knows that she can't be what he needs her to be. Her path is her own and it lies with people who understand all of what she is.

It's so clear to her now.

She's finally ready to admit that her thoughts are returning to beautiful and loving, relentless and loyal Nyssa all the time.

It's time to return to the lover she'd been running away from.

It's time to return and give her love freely. 

This time she won't wait until things blow up in her face. She won't make Oliver's mistake. 

She's going to make the right choice now for all of them.


End file.
